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Monday, December 1, 2014

Americans say Pope/Patriarch meeting will boost US dialogue

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Two Orthodox leaders in America say the meeting
between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in
Turkey this weekend will have important repercussions in the United
States.

The get-together with Bartholomew, the “first among equals” of
Orthodox leaders, was the official motive for the pontiff’s Nov. 28-20
trip to Turkey.

The Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, theological advisor of the Greek
Orthodox Archdiocese of America, said the meeting has already had one
concrete American result: It’s prompted American bishops from both
churches to revive their own annual meetings.

There’s precedent for a meeting between a pope and a patriarch
changing things on the ground in the United States: After a 1964
encounter, both churches in America began recognizing one another’s
marriages, he said.

“This meant that our faithful were reassured that marrying outside
their respective churches did not also imply losing their Catholic or
Orthodox identity,” he said.

Chryssavgis, who’s serving as a press aide during the papal visit,
argues that Americans, perhaps more than anyone else, should care about
the dialogue.

“We have a tendency to feel complacent in a world that is otherwise
suffering and in turmoil,” he said. “We easily forget how much of our
planet — even before our very eyes, in cities throughout America — lives
in poverty and hunger, [and] we are not always ready to be held
accountable for our attitudes and actions.”

Chryssavgis says the push for Catholic/Orthodoxy unity isn’t just
internal Church housekeeping, but is essential to building a better
world.

“We have to recognize that we cannot survive without one another,” he
said. “We cannot find peace unless we make peace. We certainly cannot
protect our environment from global warming if we do not work with one
another.”

“In our globalized world, dialogue is not a luxury,” he said. “It is vital and essential.”Pope Francis spent the last three days of November in Turkey visiting
his “older brother,” Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. On
Sunday, the two signed a common declaration in which they express the
resolution to “intensify our efforts to promote the full unity of all
Christians, and above all between Catholics and Orthodox.”

Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras

In the United States, the North American Orthodox-Catholic
Theological Consultation is the oldest uninterrupted conversation
between the two churches in the world, starting only a year after a
historic encounter between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of
Constantinople in 1964.The Rev. Emmanuel Lemelson, an American priest of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate who was in Turkey as an official guest at the meetings,
says friendship is the key to progress.

“It’s from these small friendships that something truly historical
can be forged,” he said. “It’s not from bureaucracy or declarations,
it’s the simple relationship between two human beings. I think the power
of that is unlimited.”

Lemelson says there are no dogmatic or schismatic reasons for the separation.“There’s no heresy between the two churches,” he said. “There’s no
fundamental flaw in their theologies, the person of Christ or the
Trinity.”

“To the outside world, it must be a scandal that they are separated,” Lemelson said.Chryssavgis said the dialogue today is focusing on the thorny subject
of power in the Church, especially the balance between papal leadership
and the role of the bishops.

“Although there is far more that unites us than what divides us, this
subject is at the very core of differences between our two churches,”
he said.

Lemelson said that that the friendship forged between Francis and
Bartholomew I makes this “an unprecedented moment” for ecumenism.

Although he’s supporter of visionary leaders marking the paths
through grand gestures, Chryssavgis agrees that the personal friendship
between Francis and Bartholomew “rises above mere symbolism to authentic
reality and fidelity to the prayer of Christ ‘that his disciples may be
one’.”